Long December

Every year, I wish the same wish – that I could go to sleep on December 1 and wake up on December 31, just in time to welcome in the new year.

Sometimes, December feels easier and sometimes it feels more difficult.

I know there are things that I can do to make December better for myself. One of them is blogging, something that I have not been doing for quite a while.

So, I'm going to try to post at least a few times this month. I've been thinking about a lot of things (as usual) and maybe it is time to start trying to put some of those thoughts into words.

In the meantime, here is a link to my ever-growing, end-of-year, YouTube playlist. These are the songs that comfort, console and keep me company through this dark, dark month. Perhaps they will improve December for you, too:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUCTQC2TUoqBl3DQ5x7IgBY7tFJdnhXgI

Quitter! (Part 1)

Soda pop

So, about 300 days ago, I quit drinking pop.* 

Screen cap from my Quit for Health app.

I'd had a one-a-day habit for years. I started with Diet Coke in my teens (more like three-a-day back then), but after I drank way too much aspartame pulling an all-nighter in Uni, I switched to the full-on sugar version. Never a coffee-drinker, I settled into the habit of drinking one Coke (or an occasional Dr. Pepper) in the morning to get myself going.

Or, if I was trying not to drink pop first thing, or at all (both of which I attempted many times), it would be my fall back emotional safety net if things got bumpy in the middle of the day.

I resorted to it if I felt sad. Or angry. Or if I needed energy. Or if I needed to dig deep to find one last burst of cheerfulness to get me through the day.

I thought quitting was going to be a miserable experience. I thought I would become a total ogre and that everyone would hate me.

Quitting was hard, don't get me wrong. I probably looked at my quit app hourly (or more often than that!) for the first couple of weeks. And for a couple of months, I would say my mood was a little darker than usual, but not ogre-calibre. As the months have gone on, I feel like my more-or-less usual self without needing those bursts of sugar – which I used to think were an integral part of me, something I couldn't possibly live without.

This far into the Year of Quit, I don't really think about it anymore. I think I've transformed into a person who doesn't drink pop.

And just look at that screen cap up there to see the amount of sugar I have not consumed in 300 days – over 11 KILOGRAMS! That's more than 5 and a half of those bags of white sugar you buy at the grocery store. Terrifying. And I thought nothing of it for years and years.

It's kind of amazing. And it's probably the first time in my life that I am glad to think of myself as a quitter.

*In the interest of absolute accuracy and transparency, I have been 98.5% pop-free for the past 300 days. Which means I have had pop four times, once by accident and the other times when I was feeling unbearably cranky. Nobody's perfect, and 98.5% is close enough for me.

Breathing and Smiling

Remember that old joke?

The one about how you shouldn't judge a person until you've walked a mile in their shoes?

Because that way, when you judge them anyway, you'll be a mile away and you'll have their shoes.

I've been thinking about that old chestnut a lot lately in connection with my further experiments with a meditation practice I mentioned in an earlier post.

I picked the technique up from the book Reconciliation by Thich Nhat Hanh. (A dear friend sent me the book this winter, when she knew I was really struggling with depression.)

The meditation is simple:

Breathing in, I am aware of _______________________.
Breathing out, I smile at _______________________.

It can be used for mindfulness around anything – addictive behaviours, obsessive thoughts, one's mind and body.

It is a way of cultivating friendliness and joy, or, if that is a bit much to shoot for, acceptance and tolerance.

Some examples:

Breathing in, I am aware of my toes.
Breathing out, I smile at my toes.

Breathing in, I am aware of my hurt.
Breathing out, I smile at my hurt.

Breathing in, I am aware of my craving for sugar.
Breathing out, I smile at my craving for sugar.

Breathing in, I am aware of the sky.
Breathing out, I smile at the sky.

One of the most interesting things I am finding in this experiment is the large range of smiles I have inside of me: rueful, wistful, kind, bitter, fake, angry, hollow, joyful, giddy, pure, shaky, twisted, hopeful, hesitant, longing, passionate, contented, uncertain, wounded, smart-arsed, disappointed, smug, sleepy, hostile, gentle, sweet, down-to-earth and wholehearted smiles. I can feel their nuances playing across my face as I try smiling at many different thoughts, body parts, behaviours, things in the world around me.

Perhaps, if I get very brave, I will try doing this exercise in front of a mirror. 

I do this meditation as often as I remember to throughout the day. It doesn't take very long. Although the feelings it stirs up can be a bit overwhelming.

But I am full of those feelings anyway. And, in parallel with that old joke at the beginning of this post, now I'm also breathing and smiling.

Home Sweet Home

I just got back yesterday from a week spent at the 39th Annual Labrador Creative Arts Festival. (If you'd like to read about my experiences there in detail, please visit my music blog here).

The trip was amazing – very intense and very social. I was a bit worried that I wasn't going to come through it gracefully, when it had only been a couple of weeks since I had been feeling so depressed.

Fortunately, I passed the test! I feel like I did a good job. I learned a lot. I shared some of my knowledge and songs and experiences.

And boy, is it ever good to be home again! It's good to have the option of solitude and peacefulness. It's good to have time to rest, relax, write and process the week.

I have some personal work ahead of me now. During the trip, I let go of my food intentions completely and only did yoga for the first three days. I didn't want to put pressure on myself to try to maintain my relatively unfamiliar self-care routine in the face of a hectic schedule. The important thing was to keep going and have fun. And if that meant reverting to a few old crutches, like sugar or a glass of wine at a soirée, I wasn't going to fuss about it.

For the most part, I didn't have too many dark thoughts intruding. I think I was too busy to feel down, even in the face of making less healthy choices.

I certainly noticed a difference in my body, and especially my digestion, eating delicious things like flummies and fish and chips, and my big fall-back: trail mix laced with pralined nuts and Reese's Pieces:

Instant energy!

I'm looking forward to getting back on board with a healthier diet and a calmer schedule.

Yesterday afternoon, I did a little work, snuggled with Salinger and then slept for eleven hours last night! Today I got up, did yoga, ate rice and veggies for breakfast and went to the farmers' market.

It feels very good to be back home!

Depression Part 3: I'm BAAAAAAACK!

I was walking across the parking lot at the Lunenburg Farmer's Market this morning and I thought, "What a beautiful day!" It was grey and soft and warm for November. I smiled and I realized that I'm back.

I feel like myself again.

There's a smile on my face and I feel juicy. I have dug a little deeper in my well and struck a gushing spring. I have been buoyed up to the surface, laughing and soaking wet.

I feel so, so lucky.

I feel lucky, but it's not really luck. It's the support of friends and family. It's the karma of past generosity paying dividends. It's the benefits of creativity and making investments in my life that I can count on to be there for me when the chips are down. It's the result of taking a good, hard look at what I need and what I want and making an effort to change the way I was thinking about myself and the way I have been treating myself.

I had let myself get so run down.

I was thinking terrible things about myself: that I'm not good enough, that I'm not entitled to enjoy life, that life is a terrible thing, a burden, a misery of worries and grief and unsolvable problems. That no one is ever going to love me. I got sucked into a world view of pain and rejection and loneliness. It stirred up familiar pain, rejection and loneliness from my past.

I got stuck.

Well, I call bullsh*t on all that. Many people already do love me. And I love myself. I love my explorations in life, even the things that could be categorized as mistakes. I'm perfectly entitled to live my life the way I see fit. I don't have to do things to prove myself to anybody; I don't have to do things I don't want to do because of some imaginary shoulds — or shoulds that are placed on me by other people. I don't have to be a saint, angel or martyr. As Mary Oliver wrote in her wonderful and much referred to poem, Wild Geese:

"You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting."

These have been the crappiest three months (or perhaps 6, 9, 12, 18? months) that I can remember in my adult life. And they are over.

Now I know that I can get that lost and find my way back to myself again.


Taking better care of myself these past couple of weeks has made a big difference. I've been eating good food, most of the time, and not kicking myself when I've decided to eat stuff that is less good for me (i.e. not food). I haven't been drinking any alcohol. I've done yoga every single day (except this Monday, when I went to Nia class instead). Yoga feels amazing. I've been telling myself good things; reminding myself frequently. I plan to keep it up. I feel amazing.

Which means things are back to normal. Only better. I'm generally a pretty up person. I love my work, my life, my community. Now I feel like I have some more tools to look out for my typical pitfalls.

This episode has been a wake-up call to take better care of myself, to take my well-being more seriously. I am committed to better boundaries and a better attitude toward myself.

I'm sure there will still be dark and difficult days – but they will be wet and splashy ones, not dry and dusty ones, and for that, I am very, very grateful.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things. 
— Mary Oliver, Wild Geese

Depression Part 2: What do I need to do for myself right now?

It's November 1st and Salinger and I are in our new winter accomodations.

Salinger, our yoga mat and all of the boxes that still need to be unpacked...

This is about a fresh-start-y as it gets, I think. And I need a fresh start.

I've really let myself sink down into the depths over the past year and more. The depression I've been evading most of my life has caught up with me. I've been looking at everything through ugly lenses, seeing the worst in myself, in my life, in the culture/society and world in which I live. What a downer I've been on!

I feel like I needed to go down this rabbit hole. I needed to finally admit to my struggles with depression. Once I realized I was depressed, I decided to give myself two weeks to wallow with all my might. I cried whenever I felt like it. I slept during the day. I thought dark thoughts about things and people. I ate tons of sugar and junk food.

It felt good. But partly it felt good because I knew it was for just a little longer. I knew that a change and a fresh start were ahead of me. I knew I was moving and I knew I had a plan for what this move is going to mean for me.

Basically, I have decided to take better care of myself. The depression that I grew up with and denied and defied, was always telling me the same things: You're not important. Other people's feelings are more important that your feelings. Other people's needs are more important than your needs.

Indeed, other people's feelings/needs might well be more important than my feelings and needs TO THOSE OTHER PEOPLE – fair enough. My problem was that I came to believe that other people's feelings and needs should more important than mine TO ME. Essentially, this means that I haven't been able to focus on taking good care of myself. Even if I was depleted or hurting, I would try to find a way to keep giving other people what I thought (and/or what they were telling me) they needed.

Sugar has been my best helper — and my worst saboteur...

I've really leaned on sugar to help me live my life. Whenever I was sad, angry or upset, a little sugar would numb those emotions and enable me to act cheerful. I thought that was a good thing because I thought other people needed/wanted me to act cheerful. Maybe they did and maybe they didn't, but that's what I believed.

The trouble is that the amount of sugar I was consuming was really unhealthy. I've watched myself gain a few pounds every year and it's getting to a critical point where I don't feel healthy in my body anymore. I don't like the place I'm in emotionally, either. All the sugar in the world can't get me out of the spot I find myself in now – in fact, I think all of the sugar highs and lows and all of the denial sugar lets me do has been making everything worse.

In order to spare myself and others from having to accept/witness some of my emotions, I have been hurting myself.

It stops here.

I have a new mantra: Sugar is a flavouring, not a food (and I'm counting alcohol as a form of sugar). I'm still going to have some sugar-containing foods – as condiments, as seasoning, as very occasional treats, but no more sugar as food. No more sugar as emotional refuge. No more resorting on a daily basis to chocolate bars and soda pop and cake and cookies and ice cream. I'm not doing this to myself anymore.

Self-care begins here

Yes, I have a plan to take better care of myself. It starts today and it goes like this:

• Change the sugar thing;
• Check for food sensitivities: today I'm starting two weeks of no gluten, dairy, soy or corn and then will introduce them back one at a time to see if I'm sensitive to any of those foods. I've been suspicious of dairy for a while and I'm curious about the others. Here was breakfast:
  

  

  Yes, that's brown rice, pickled ginger and avocado. It was delicious!

• Implement some of the other strategies from the Tranform Your Relationship with Food course that I took in the spring, especially slowing down and relaxing my eating and preparing healthy snacks so I always have some on hand;
• Shop for local, sustainable food at the local farmers' markets;
• Use my awesome adjustable desk in the standing position more of the time;
• Use fitbolt.com to make sure that I take regular breaks for movement when I am working/playing at the computer;
• Practice yoga regularly – I'm shooting for half an hour a day (I'm doing the 15-day free trial at yogaglo.com) with one 60 or 90 minute session on the weekend. Salinger was a fan of and active participant in our first yoga practice this morning;
• Dance Nia once a week – one of the benefits in living near Mahone Bay is being close to Kathleen Naylor's awesome Nia class at the Mahone Bay centre;
• Do something fun and frivolous at least once a week – a concert, movie, play, coffee date or meal out;
• Simplify: my life, my eating, my schedule, my volunteer commitments, my stuff;
• Try to put some boundaries around work – this is going to be a toughy. As I head into my busy season and think about what I can do, I no I can't take a day off or limit my number of hours per week for the jobs that I commit to. But I can limit the number of jobs I accept and I plan to;
• Walk: I am in the heart of Rails-to-Trails country here in Martin's River. I've downloaded the map and I intend to explore;
• Allow myself to feel my feelings;
• Allow myself to express my feelings;
• Think positively whenever possible (yes, Stuart Smiley fans, I am indulging in daily affirmations :-);
• Allow myself to be imperfect at all of this, keep feeling my feelings and keep trying again (or tweaking) whenever something doesn't work for me.